 If you would like French interpretation, our interpreters will be here shortly. Spanish interpretation equipment is available at the front table. Thank you. Okay. Welcome, everyone. It is good to be in a room full of powerful rank and file labor activists. My name is Sarah Nelson. I'm the president of the Association of Flight Attendants CWA. This is being live-streamed, just so everybody knows. We're live. We've got our interpreters, and I just got to shout it out. Where do we have either AFA flight attendants or flight attendants organizing at Delta Airlines sent out in the country just a little bit more than a hundred years ago? She said, if you would only understand that you hold the solution to the whole problem in your hands, for if labor were to hold up in every industry in America, the capitalist would yield to any and all demands, for the world could simply not go on, for the world could simply not go on. And I just want to take a moment to recognize that what she was talking about, of course, was a general strike, and the strike is our tactic, but solidarity is our power. And so in the workplace, it doesn't matter if the union calls talk like a pirate day, if everybody's doing it, the boss is quaking in their boots, because it signals a much stronger message that the workers are united, we can't be divided, we won't let their delayed tactics, their distractions, any of it demoralize us, because together we feel the power of solidarity, and we understand that we have the power, they may have the money and control now, but we're going to exercise our power to take over control for a world that is built for the people, with workers first. There's a whole room here, and there's a whole hotel full of great progressive activists. We like to put things in terms of the political left. Well, every one of you knows that on the picket line, when we set our demands, when we define what the problem is and set our demands from the shop floor, from the union hall, we have to get to a 90% strike vote or better in order to take on the boss. So there is much more that we have in common in our workplace than anything that could ever divide us. And we can't divide ourselves. And I know that we, as progressives, like to think of ourselves as the underdog. But the fact of the matter is that we are the leaders that are going to save this world, we are the leaders that build this world, we are the leaders that understand that when you bring people together and you find our common interests and you do not allow the boss to divide us, that we have the power to take control and win. And we have teachers from West Virginia in here, we have teachers from CTU right here in Chicago, we have the spirit of the great Karen Lewis right here in the room with us telling us that we can still say the word strike and win. And I know that every single person in here has gone to umwa.org and contributed to the mine workers' strike against warrior met in Alabama. Because let's think about this, okay? We were organized in the millions, quickly in the 1930s. We had to. We didn't wait for elections, we sat down, we stood up, whatever we did, it was together and we said to the boss, you are going to negotiate with us, you are going to meet us eye to eye at the table, hear our concerns and meet our demands. The United Mine Workers of America set that standard for us, built the CIO, made sure many people in this room could have the unions that they have today. And those miners in Alabama are fighting for the same things that we fought for a hundred years ago. I talked to some of those miners who when they go underground 2000 feet, mining metallurgical coal by the way that is shipped over to China and used to build steel and then comes back sometimes in wind turbines that we buy from the Chinese. They when they went underground, they didn't see the sunlight oftentimes. I talked to some of them who had so much forest overtime or who had to work so many hours because they were working for a paltry wage that they only saw their kids four days in the year because they only had four days off, they only saw the sun four days in the year. Eight hours work, eight hours rest, eight hours for what we will. That's labor's demand a hundred years ago, that's our demand today. And the only way that we're going to get there, the only way we're going to take our productivity back, our vacation, our paid time, paid sick time, livable wage, affordable housing, thank you very much, and not in company housing, I'm here and some people start to suggest this again. Let's be really clear about what's happening here. We have the stand up fight back and so that's what we're going to do and that's what we're going to talk about. And what's really cool is that we have some kick ass women activists here out front. Next to me we have Sarah Papin from Starbucks Workers United in Seattle. Next to Sarah is Kevona Neely who won her strike in Buffalo. Next to Kevona is Donna Jo Marks Bakery Workers Local 364 from my home state in Oregon. And I'm going to have Sarah Kevona and Donna Jo introduce themselves, tell you briefly about their strike action and what happened there, then we're going to have a little discussion and then we might get some questions from you. Sound good? All right. So Sarah, what was it like to strike before you even had a union? Tell us about you and tell us about what happened. Yeah. So my store, Fifth and Pike, downtown Seattle. We are some of the most overworked people. Well, I think everybody in this room knows that everybody in the working class is overworked. That's probably the least controversial statement I'll say all week. We, convention season, we're right by convention center. My life actually looks a lot like what the workers that you see around at these various shops. Be nice to them because I know what that life is like and it's very hard. So be nice. We had just convention after convention that was, we were so understaffed for. We were literally breaking our bodies. I messed up my back. We were working so hard running around the emotional turmoil of spending your entire day frustrated and pissed off and also have your customers frustrated and pissed off at you and then you got to try to be nice about it is exhausting. So the next time one came around, there's a three day convention. It was going to be the largest convention that we've had since the pandemic. And we all just said, what if we didn't, what if we didn't break our bodies making the store record profit while we've been denied a raise after raise and you're not making any of that money, none of it. We're tired. So we didn't. We walked out. We cost the store probably about $20, $30,000 in three days. And in the meantime, we raised $15,000 for the Pacific Northwest strike fund. So yeah, that's my strike. Hello, everyone. I'm from Buffalo, New York. My employer is Catholic Health. It had been a long time coming for us. We represent a lot of different job titles in healthcare, registered nurses, texts, environmental services workers, dietary, pretty much almost every healthcare worker job title, you can name it. For us, our employer tried to take a lot of things away from us. For starters, our pension, healthcare. You work in healthcare, so you shouldn't have to be fighting for, to have good healthcare benefits or be paying tons of money. It's just ridiculous. And we had job titles that weren't even making $15 an hour at all and basically being not even able to survive. How can you not give your employees a living wage? Our other thing was the respect and how we were treated. Just tons of things that you face in a workplace and we just couldn't take it in anymore. So we decided to go, we did a, staffing was our biggest issue. Patient ratio to staff, our nurses having six and seven patients and ICU should never be having to take care of three to four patients, our aides. Every job title you can name underworked. Staffing was just terrible. So with all of that being said, our workers got fed up. We did informational pickets, anything you can name we did and we stuck together. We had a lot of solidarity. A lot of our lower wage workers, dietary, EVS, they were a lot, they were hesitant on going out on strike and we understood that. So we had meetings every week to let them know we're there for you. We're behind you 100%. We're all in this together. We had a lot of support from our other local unions. Shout out to CWA 1168 who was right by our side. Every second of the day, day in, day out, all our other local painters union, even Starbucks came out to support us, Teamsters, every union you can name we had their support, which helped us tremendously a lot. Being on the picket lines, them coming, it helped a lot of our workers to understand and know that we weren't alone. We weren't by ourselves. We were all in this fight together. In the end, we were out on strike for 40 days. I will say that was the longest days of our lives. But we got through it, day in, day out, sun, rain, shine. We were out there, all our members were out there. In the end, we did get a great contract. We still have a lot of work to do. Still fighting with our employer, even though we gains a lot, but more so than now. We have more solidarity than ever. Our members understand, you know, what we fought for, and they know that we have a fight to continue and that this is not over. It will never be over. I'm Donna Joe. I'm from Portland, Oregon, and my employer was, is Nabisco, also known as Mondaliz. We were on strike almost a year ago in July. We were on strike for 41 days. We were on strike for the same reason that everybody else is going through. But at the time, we thought it was just us. We thought we were the only ones poor Nabisco. And it's been a long five years, we were going, we went without a contract for five years. And in that five years, we lost our pension. Now they want to come for our medical and they just want to take, take, take, take, take. And Portland was the first plant who did a call out day. Everybody was sick that day. And we were the only plant who did it, but it scared the company enough to shut down the other plants because they thought people were going to call out. So we had an idea of how strong we were going to be. We went out first and then there were five of us. Chicago was the last plant that went out and it was scary. We didn't know what we were going to win, which we did, but we didn't know it at the time. We lost our healthcare. We just didn't know what the outcome was going to be. And we felt by ourselves. And then something amazing happened. We had the DSA show up. We had jobs with justice show up. We had electrical workers, longshoremen, teachers, nurses. It was so many unions, I can't name them all, but it was at that moment that we realized we weren't by ourselves, that we all had the same story. But we allowed these companies to abuse us so much that we were just a relationship and we didn't know to say, hey, this is what's going on. So when we heard everybody's story and everybody heard our story, we were like, hey, not alone. And because everyone came out and stood with us and we had rallies and listened to fire. And we won because of it. The company came to us in the beginning to negotiate the same contract that they offered us five years ago. But once everyone got involved, they came with a different tune. We got everything we asked for. And I just want to just say the side note. As I sit here and I look at this crowd out here, it's a constant reminder of how big our army is. We are army. And by ourselves, we're nothing. But together, look at this. You know, and yeah, it's just it's hard. You know, all my brothers and sisters standing in solidarity is awesome. And we all can win if we all stick together. So thank you. Thanks, Stone Joe. And I just I think that what we've heard here and what all of you are responding to is that no matter the job, no matter the industry, no matter the workplace, we're all having the same issues. The same thing our time making Carter, not giving us just to do our thing, us having the ability to time off. Even if you get to the top of the pocket in the paper that we need to be able to take it. So I would just like to note that, Donna, Joe, what you said just reminded me of something I heard from a good friend a little while ago is Josh Black in the audience here, Association of Professional Flight Attendants, National Secretary. He told me, Josh, if you are, you better stand up. He told me a few weeks ago and all of our leaders at AFA, he said, a rising tide lifts all boats. We've all heard that, right? But we're the tide. We're not the boats. So welcome into the tide. Management has been telling us for 50 years that we should feel lucky to have a job. And the tide is going to tell them that they should feel lucky to have our work. So, Sarah, I don't think that you had a chance to add. I think we heard this from Kavana and from Donna Joe a little bit, but talk a little bit about how you interacted both internally in the store and externally with the community to support your strike. Yeah, we have great community support in Seattle. Our local DSA has been great. So we had a huge shout out for our strike. Our picket line was great. Also, the convention that was going on was like an anime convention. So you'd get just random people in like Spider-Man costumes like join the picket. That was super fun. Yeah, sorry. I forgot the first part of your question. No, just how did you see power grow as you were engaging your workers and engaging the community? Yeah, I mean, I think in my store it really started with like there was a sense of helplessness for a long time. Like there's a long time when you spend going, hey, I think this is wrong. Hey, I think this is wrong. Hey, I think this is wrong. Your boss just tells you like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then you start to realize we started to realize as we got involved with organizing that like, well, actually, our boss shouldn't get to decide that. And actually, we do have the power to force that issue. We can do that. And then growing the community support, honestly, people have just been so excited to and like, thankfully. So it's been pretty easy. We just ask people to show up and people to can you. So each of you, I like to remind people that using power builds power. Power is not a limited resource. It expands as we exercise it. And can you just give me a story of either an individual, an individual life that you saw changed as you use this power and the strike, or even your own experience? How did this strike change your life in terms of understanding your own power? For me, it changed my life. I've always been involved in the U.N. I've been a BCTGM for 32 years, worked at Wonder Bread, then went to Nabisco. And I was always a shop steward. But now more, I joined the DSA. I spoke on several different panels about our strike. And understanding, it was an understanding for me that we're not alone, that, you know, it's bigger than you. It's bigger than your union. It's it was an awakening. I always say this and I'll say it again. I personally feel Nabisco was the spark that created this wildfire. We were state to state to state strike. And we were bigger news than I ever thought we were going to be. And I understand pain for it. I understand that we pay it forward to the next people who are ready. I understand the importance of unity and brotherhood, sisterhood. Understanding is bigger than me is kept me moving forward. People get complacent. They go back to work. We won and they get normalized again to the abuse, to the normalcy of the dysfunction. And they forget that quick. And there has to be the people who are here now to go back and remind them that there's still a fire that we have to keep. We have to keep the fire going. We have to add coal to it. We can't get complacent because the companies won't. So it's just a learning, learning more for me and building these relationships and these friendships and everything to me has just been really amazing. So that's, that's who it impacted was me. Thank you. I use myself, for example, I've been involved with my union for about 12 years now. During a strike, I got to talk to and meet many people who we pass each other every day. And all you do is say hi to them or you may not say anything at all. But to get to know them while you're out on a picket line, walking with them, you got to know their names. They had kids. Even stories were relatable about just any and everything. We gained, for me, it was, we gained a lot of younger and newer, not newer employees, but workers who weren't involved and they stepped it up like tremendously. And they stayed involved like even now. You have a couple here with us today that became stewards and that are still doing things and it's just amazing how, how, how far we came from that. Like people who thought they would never be involved, got involved. So for me, even for myself, I feel like I've grown a little bit more too since the strike. I sit on my executive board, I'm sitting on my second term and just even communicating with people and letting them know my story and how I started and how I got involved. Letting them know like you can do this too. The littlest thing, just coming to a meeting, you're involved. Talking to people in the hallways at work, just that's the biggest thing for me is just talking to people and getting to know them. That was the best thing that came out of it for me. And not to say the least, with staffing, we were one of the first hospitals to have staffing ratios. Yeah, I love what you said about getting to know people on the picket line. I think that is very accurate. You know, I think one of the things that's very different about Starbucks and a lot of the other, you know, workplaces we talk about is my store is 17 people, right? We're very small. It's very easy to already know all these people. And my store is really, really tight knit. And I didn't think that it was possible for us to get closer because we're so close. We have gotten so, so much closer since planning the strike, going on strike. We, I really didn't think it was possible. And it's what I've seen happen at many of the other stores that I talk about, talk to, like these people that maybe weren't that close with their coworkers. They weren't that tight knit. They've formed that relationship now. They're tight now. It's something that I tell people to look forward to when they start organizing at their stores, that you're going to get to know your coworkers in a way you never knew them before. You're going to become this really good family. It's going to just like completely change your energy at work, really. I love that, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. So we're going to talk in a moment here about actually technically what was done to prepare for these strikes. I want each of you to give me the roadmap that you laid down or maybe that you learned as you went even. But also I think it's really important that we recognize that in each of these cases and in many out here in the audience, people expect, people experienced change in a relatively short period of time. When we hear over and over again that in politics, you vote and you feel like it doesn't matter who you vote for, you get the same outcome, right? And so it's really important that we recognize as we talk about the strike. The strike is a critical component of collective bargaining. You don't have collective bargaining without it. Public sector workers should all have the right to strike too, thank you very much. But we live in a capitalist society and government is supposed to exist for the people. But in a capitalist society, it's profits over people every time. And so the way to get change is to go to the root cause. So when we organize in our workplaces, when we're willing to strike against the unfair practices of the boss, we change politics too. And so I'd love to hear, I want to hear both about your roadmap on planning your strikes. But also can you let us know, did you get support from elected officials? Did it change the way locally that they responded to you? What happened with the strike in terms of your political view locally in your community? And any one of you can start the strike. It was scary, like I said before, and we realized we had to do something. We went out the worst time. It was COVID. We knew we were going to lose our health care. It was a scary time to go, but it was the right time. We just didn't know it at that time. We didn't know how many people got fed up. What COVID did was make these companies make billions of dollars more than they ever made before, and they got greedy with it. And they offered us $2 more an hour, but only straight pay and only for a short period of time. Three months, then it was over, but we were still important to them. So they said. So they say, yeah. And it made people tired and made people fed up. So when we went out, it wasn't a, I'm not sure, we were ready to go, no matter what we were going to lose. We really didn't have a strategy. We never, you know, I think the last time Nabisco went on strike was in 67. And the companies before that, they just appreciated their workers. We got everything we asked for before in the past and nobody wanted to take anything. And then we get this Mondelees, this Mondele company, these thugs, who want to take everything that our brothers and sisters before us fought for. Gave up money in the pension, gave up raises, gave up so we can have the things that we have. They wanted to take what they never gave us. And it just was enough fuel for us to say enough is enough. We went out there and we got the support from a lot of representatives. The governor, the mayor, so much so that when we were out on the line, one of the employees from the AFL-CIO asked us why we weren't strike and when we explained it to them. One of the things we talked about was our working condition. And at our job, our schedule, it's a tedious schedule, but it's something we agreed on in our contract. We work 12 days on, we get two days off. We get paid time and half and double time on the weekends, so we get compensated for that time. But as we start losing people, they weren't replacing people because they realized it was cheaper to work us more than the higher people. They were the pay us overtime, they didn't care. They didn't care about the overtime, the double time, they didn't care. Long as there was not a body. So there were times that we would be at the time clock ready to go home and they would say you got to work five hours over. And if we said no, we got a point. So we got disciplined for their last minute decisions. There are times you were in your car and if you made the mistake of answering your phone, they would tell you to come back. Same thing. So when the AFLCL heard this, they decided to change a law in Portland, it's Senate Bill 1513. And myself, our union treasurer, Mike Berlingham and Regina, we testified to the Senate. And the bill passed that whenever they want us to work overtime, they have to give us a five day notice. And if we say no, they can't discipline us. It's their fault they're understaffed. It's their fault that they choose to work us to the bone. What do they call us before our heroes and treat us like zeros, right? So now they have to give us a five day notice and not just a blank notice. Not saying, hey, on Monday, be prepared to work. They have to have the job, the specific job. So and there's more work to do. You know, right now it's just covering bakeries and tortilla plants. But it's going to go bigger and hopefully I'll make it here and making other states because it's such a great bill. And being on strike made us realize how important the government is to be a part of this because have we not gone on strike? This bill, 1513 was already in place. It got amended to add this in. But this bill wouldn't have been here, that part of it. So that was the importance of the government to me because at first I wasn't sure when I would see certain people. I thought it was picture time, get the vote times. I didn't know if their hearts were really about the workers. But watching the bill pass on the floors, the house and just watching these bills go, you know, majority rule, it made me realize how important it is to act and to act, you know, and not meaning to offend anybody, but to act when the Democrats are in office because it was, we wouldn't want it. I don't believe another time. So it made me look at politics in a different way. It made me understand that it starts with us. It doesn't start with a politician, it starts with us. And our votes matter, so we need to vote. But that was my experience and that's why I believe the politicians are important during times of strike and pre-strike and negotiations and because the point is we shouldn't have to go on strike. We should just, they should hear us holler. But unfortunately we have to take a stand sometimes and, you know, find the power we didn't know we have and we got power, you guys. So thank you. What was the, I'm sorry, what was the first part of the question? Okay, talk about the mechanics of preparing for your strike, you know, whether it was a roadmap that you laid out or you learned along the way either way and how did your strike connect to local politicians? What was their response? What was the interplay politically in your community? We had a plan. We started off by establishing our structure, breaking down departments by departments, making sure we had enough what you call mobilizers to get the information to each person in a department whether it be SHIF or just, we have some smaller departments, just a smaller department. Once we made, once we did that, we made contact, we started doing calls. We would do calls to each and every member. We did mass texting. We did meetings every week. Anything you could name, we did it all the way up until strike. One of the other things we did was we had informational pickets where we stood outside, one particular informational picket we had, we stood outside corporate where our CEO and all of his workers was and we held up signs. People were hunking their horns, basically to say like we're not going anywhere. That same day, we also had petitions already signed and we had them in a packet and tried to deliver them to him. Of course, we did not get in the building, but the fact of the matter is we were out there and everyone's seen us. They were looking at us out the windows, other offices and everything and we kept that going, leading up also backtracking a little bit. We had each department go to bargaining and talk to the bargaining team and management and tell them their issues in their department, like the day ends, the day out of their work, their workload, the issues they were facing so that management couldn't say that they did not know what was going on. They were able to speak in front of them. I think in some ways that did help. Departments that normally had spoke up went to speak, so that helped us a lot. Leading up to the actual day we went out on strike, which was October 1st. We had support from everywhere, even all the employees who were off that day were outside of the hospital so that when the night shift people came out, they were not alone. Everyone was out there. We had both sides of the streets filled up all the way wrapped around the hospital. We even did, we had candles out that day and everything. It was a happy but bittersweet moment, not knowing how long we were going to be out for, not knowing what was going to happen days to come, but we did it. We absolutely did it. Fires of politicians coming to help us, we had many, many politicians in our city come. Even our mayor came. They did help out with a lot of things, all the way down to the gate around the hospital, so where we were picking in that, obviously it had to be measured because they didn't want you so close to the doors and so close to the building. We actually got in contact with the mayor and told him, hey, this isn't their property, so we had to get the map of the city and everything and actually the fence ended up getting pushed back so we had more room to walk around the hospital and pick it. Also with that being said, we had Lieutenant Latisha James come, so Attorney General. One of the things that she did was she filed a complaint against the hospital with the government because one of the things they did was the people that they brought in from out of town were not licensed to work in the city of New York, so one of the things she did was let the company know like, hey, you got these people here that are not supposed to be working here. They're not even licensed here to work here, so it was kind of funny, but we noticed like right after that they started covering up their badges with like black tape and stuff, so we wouldn't not recognize them, but we still did. Couple other things they did, just the pressure on our employer, our politicians come and put in pressure on them, helped us a lot, it got us, I'm not going to say faster help with ending the strike, but it most definitely made some progress. It got them moving because at times they wouldn't come in to bargain for hours and hours and hours. Our bargaining committee could be there until three or four o'clock in the morning and our employer wouldn't come in at all, which is crazy. So with all that being said, your politicians have a big part to play into with backing the unions up. And one of the things for us is some of our politicians, like their family members and mothers and fathers worked in healthcare too or were part of other unions, so I think they understood exactly what we were going through and was like, hey, you shouldn't be having to go through this. You shouldn't be having to fight for healthcare, your healthcare workers. Anything you can name, they were behind us 100%. I really got to thank, for my story going on strike, I really got to mostly thank all the stores that went on strike first. Because that was how we got it done in our stores, that we'd been talking about strikes because we'd seen it happen around the country. We saw it happen in Buffalo, Buffalo won some really great protections from their strike too, increased COVID safety isolations, please give them a hand, they did that. Paul Faxman, Milwaukee and Colorado I think went on strike, yeah, please give them around, these workers did incredibly brave things. Cooper Point in Olympia was out on strike, first strike on the west coast. I think Billy might even be here, Billy, if you're here, stand up. Nope, okay, she dipped, I saw her earlier. But give them a round of applause anyway. And that was what really got the conversation started is we were talking about these increased isolations that we were getting, and I would tell my co-workers, well, you know why? And then we got that conversation going. The other stores going on strike, I'm always pulling them up on my phone, I'm showing it to my staff, like the figure line, the videos, hey, look at this, they're out on strike, isn't that cool? So by the time that we were pissed off about how overworked we were, we already had a pretty good idea of what a strike looked like and what it could do. And so that was a big part of the process for us, it's just talking about it. So that's something I want you all to take away is that in my experience the best time to talk about going on strike is not when you're pissed off and ready to go on strike, you want to be talking about it way before then, way before then, you want to have an idea and a plan, yes. So start having those conversations, I mean it, when you go back, like talk to your co-workers, ask them what striking would look like, what you could win, start having that conversation because I guarantee you, we all know how overworked we all are, you're going to hit one of those moments and the next year, I know it, it's going to happen sometime. So we just started making a plan, talking to the lawyers, seeing what legal check marks we needed to do, made signs, my store wanted glitter for our sign so I said, okay, and I got them glitter. There's glitter all over my car now, it was a mistake. And then we started just getting the word out, you know, doing the word out to our local Seattle GSA, getting out to other like politicians in Seattle, getting the word out to get volunteers come out onto our strike line. I spent a lot of time texting a lot of people and what I want all y'all to know is that this week we have just launched a new, it's a no coffee, no contract pledge for our community supporters and I want everybody in this room, you want to see, you want to be out on a picket with some Starbucks workers sometime, sign that pledge. We will tell you, we'll tell you when these actions are happening because let me tell you what, they're going to happen and they're going to have to happen because Starbucks is not coming to the bargaining table. We're going to have to make them come to the bargaining table and we're going to need your help to make them. And when you all go on strike, I want you to call up your Starbucks workers and we're going to come out on your picket too. Yeah, I'm pinning it, if you want to take action, go to, at Flying with Sarah, that's pinned to the top of my page, it's also pinned to the top of the Starbucks workers, United Twitter, so either one, either one, whatever. Either way, yeah. Also, I mean, just track down anybody in one of these shirts, we've got people, she's waving her hand right over there, she's got a sheet, she can help you get signed up, any of the Starbucks workers walking around, this convention should have the QR code on their phone that they can help you get it pulled up real quick and easy, takes like two minutes, and then we're going to let you all know when we're taking these actions and we're, well, we're on live stream, so I'm not going to say anything more than that. All right. Good catch, sir, good catch. Never let them see you coming. Speaking of which, since the PacCo strike and Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers in 1981 and sending a message to employers across the country to draw their workers into strikes, to break those strikes, to avoid collective bargaining at all costs, to use any tactic possible to break the unions, that's what that signaled. And we moved into an era of being afraid to say the word strike, being afraid to say the word union, business unionism, instead of worker powered action, worker led union movement that I believe we're building right here and right now. So when Donald Trump decided to take the country into the longest government shutdown in US history, saying it was about a border wall, trying to say we're a completely divided nation, all distractions. There's 40s of union busting, divide, delay, distract, demoralize. Those are all the union buster at work. It starts with belittling women, lopping off half the population, which they're attacking again right now. We have to recognize that. There's the union buster at work. That is the owner class at work. It is nothing more than that. But when that happened, a lot of people were saying, oh, the air traffic controllers could stop this in a minute if they just walked off the job. They and their union knew if they did that, the man in the White House was going to fire them faster than Ronald Reagan had. And they would have been able to do what the GOP had been trying to do for the last couple of years and privatize our air traffic control system and all kinds of forms of government, which is what they're trying to do all the time, privatize everything, take more and more control, power, and money. And as that shutdown went on, it became more and more clear to us, the slide attendance, that this was not about a border wall. It really was about that. It was about more control. They didn't care if there was an accident. They didn't care if there was a security incident. That would have accrued more power to the executive to take more control and to obliterate our democracy. And so start in the workplace and the politics will follow. Number one, solidarity is our power. Solidarity is our power. Strike is our tactic. You can't ask people who are already locked out to go on strike for us. And you can't wait for other workers to ask for help. We've got to jump in and help. How many times today have I heard DSA jumped right in to help? Jobs with justice jumped right in to help. Other unions jumped right in to help. That's what we have to do for each other. Solidarity is not transactional. It is something that lives in our hearts and a promise that we make to each other. So when we stood up and said that we were going to back up our sisters and brothers in federal sector and deny another Pac-Co moment and the flights started to stop because 10 air traffic controllers could no longer safely do their work, they had to deal within a matter of hours, within a matter of hours. But that was because they didn't want us to taste our power because the minute that we truly taste our power as workers, it is over. No more of this bullshit for-profit health care system that is killing our people or of buying elections in this country. No more killing our planets while getting our government to pay for the rocket ships that are sending the billionaires up into space while they wave to us from Mars on our burning planet. So what I heard here actually, here back on Earth, was that in each of these cases, we started to taste our power. And Don and Joe, I'd like to start with you. You said, interestingly, that you got everything that you asked for. But what else would you tell us about what you recognized about your own power and what you would do next time? OK, so the story is that Mondalees came in. They were bullies, they were thugs, and they came so hard to take everything that we were terrified. We were afraid, so afraid, that we just said, let's keep everything the same. We didn't ask for cost of living raise. We didn't ask just keep everything the same, which wasn't bad, but in an economy with COVID, everything the same hurts a little bit because we didn't get the cost of living raise, what gas going up, housing going up. So we won, but I don't want to say we didn't win. We just didn't understand that we could ask for more because we were afraid, because we had never faced this type of bullying. I guess we had, but it started out subtle, just like that bad relationship you were in. It starts out good. Then abuse happens, and no, we'll forgive them. And that's how this company came in, with a lot of gaslighting, a lot of broken promises. And we were afraid to lose our job. So we didn't know what to ask for, so we just said keep everything the same. So when we, one, when I said we got everything we asked for, we got the same contract we had before. We got a little bit of raise. We got a signing bonus, but we got that because our union rep Cameron, he asked for those things. Those are the things that the company, if we would agree to their contract, was going to give us, which is a bonus in this little bitty raise. So he told them we still want what you were going to give us, but with the same. So we got that little bit. But now we know what to ask for in three years. Now we know what we need to fight for in a different way because we do have the power. And the best way to ever hurt a company is to hit them in their pockets. You know? And threats mean nothing. We said we were going to go on strike five years ago. And five years they wrote with us on the promise of a strike that didn't come. And when we went, Portland went first, and then the others followed. But they still weren't scared. They weren't scared until the community got involved. They weren't scared until the other unions got involved. They didn't get scared until people boycotted Nabisco products and stopped buying them completely. And those shelves got empty. They got nervous when we stopped the trains. Y'all, we stopped the trains for two weeks. That's a big thing. And they tried to run the plant with scabs with people who love our plant like we do. So they don't care. They don't care if it gets tore up. They don't know what they're doing. And because we're a union-run plant, supervisors can't run our machine. So they couldn't even get stuff going. So even when they were able to get flour and sugar, they still couldn't run. We showed a type of power we didn't know we had. But now we know. So we know what to ask for in three years. And we know what to share with other union members. When I tell you we weren't prepared, we weren't. We just knew we were tired and we walked out. I wish we had been as organized as you guys, but we weren't. And I know I'm blowing up the DSA, but it's the truth. Jamie Partridge asked me, can he do a rally on the weekend? Now, mind you, I'm just a union member. I'm on the e-board, but I'm not the head of our union. I'm just a member. And I'm like, I don't know. You're going to have to ask our leader, Cameron Taylor. And Cameron says, sure, do a rally. And it might have been about maybe 50 people. I wasn't even a part of it, because it was important to meet a man in the post where I'd stood every day. But then the second one, Jamie asked me to speak. And it must have been about 300 people. And then after every Saturday we had a rally. That's when politicians showed up. The community showed up. And it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And newscasters started showing up. And it's because they came in and organized it in a different way. And the eyes opened. And just when I think about it, I still get chills, because it was such a, I don't even know how to explain the emotions I had. It was scary. It was exciting. It was just a roller coaster of emotions. And without the help of the community and the other unions and the consumers, you have to get the consumers involved. You have to tell your story. The one thing that our union rep did, Cameron Taylor, was he decided not to be the face. He would send the reporters to different people. So they got to hear our personal stories. Not our representative story, but our personal stories. And it got the community involved. We had people crying, talking about what they were afraid of and what they were going through and what they were going to lose. And it just opened the hearts of America. And it got them involved enough to boycott and hit them in their pockets. And we'll be ready in three years. And hopefully we won't have to go on strike. Hopefully, you know, we'll be able to do the pre-rallies and to get them afraid, to let them remember what we can do. But yeah, that's the one thing that I wish we would have known, our power. Yeah. Question again. Sure. What did you say? Come on, the question really is, did this change your standing and understanding your own power? How does this change for next time? What did you learn through the strike that changed your view of your own power? One of the things was to keep your members engaged. The whole way through, even though we had a plan along the way and step by step from our last contract. So our contract lasts for four years. Our last contract in 2016, we did have a very good mobilization structure. But we lost it once we all came back to once we had a contract and we came back to work. It was like even though they see us all around and see us in the hospital, it was we didn't continue to do stuff like newsletters and stuff like that. So one of the things that we have continued to do is, one, formed a couple of committees that we didn't have that we should have had, which was our mobilization committee. We meet monthly and we discuss plans on what we're going to do now, what information we want to get out to our members. So it's better now because they see us. They were used to seeing us, so now they will be looking forward to seeing us every month. So now we stand, instead of it just being during contract time, now once a month we stand in our lobby or in our ramp and we do a newsletter. It's like a one page, it might be front and back. But we take something from our contract or we take something that, an issue that we know everyone is dealing with or facing and we put it on here to keep our members engaged. We make sure we post it on the CWA boards. Just so they know, like we're still here. We're still going to be here. We're going to still be strong together and keep this. And also, you still have to enforce your contract with coming back to work. Like we still have a lot of work to do with enforcing our contract. A lot of things have changed. And I think our employees still don't know. What's the word I want to say? Not that they don't know that, but just to say, like we're not only around during contract time. We're going to keep this going. We're going to keep the momentum going. And you're going to see us. And I think that opened up the doors for more of our employees to be more comfortable with coming to talk to us and get in on a committee and everything. Like we have formed our communications committee. Just because we had it up and running during strike, we want to also keep that going too. Like again, I had talked about earlier about mass texting. We still do mass texting. So we can send a message out to all our members through a text system, which is really good. Like people are at least, you know, some people are more prone to look at a text message than go online or look in their email. So using all forms of communication is a very good tool for us. Emails, telephone calls, mass texting system. Anything you could use with social media, Facebook page, it's good to use. Yeah, I think, you know, first of all, Billy's here now. So I want everybody to give Billy a round of applause. Olympia, Starbucks worker, first strike on, first strike in the home city, home state, I mean. Honestly, I've lost track of who's in this room now. If you're a Starbucks worker who's been on strike, can you stand up? Because I know there's a few. There should be. Yeah, get them around. Yeah, this is important for me because I want you all to understand. I'm not the strike lady of the Starbucks campaign. Like, you could do a whole panel of amazing, brilliant Starbucks workers who got their stores out on strike, right? So please, thank you for helping me thank them. But yeah, I think that, you know, in terms of understanding building power, like, I don't think that there was a moment in the entire campaign so far that really clarified to me and crystallized every single thing that we talk about. Then standing outside of my store, when it was closed, watching the store be empty, standing outside with my workers, with my community members, watching this empty store that I knew would have been making thousands of dollars in that moment. There's so much we talk about our labor, it's our control, we have this, we have that. And tell your standing outside of your workplace and seeing it not make any money because its workers are outside. I think that's absolutely the most crystallizing moment. And not just for me, for my coworkers too, I think they really, really got it too. So, sorry, I just get a little emotional sometimes. I know it takes, it seems like a big step to get to a strike, but I think once you get there, like once you have that moment where you're outside of your work, you're seeing them not make money. Or, you know, like on the second day of my strike, they tried to open my store. They had to fill it with district managers and my regional director, they couldn't find any hourly partners who were willing to come in and work at my store that day. Yeah. And let me tell you what, watching a bunch of district managers pretend they know how to actually work at Starbucks is real funny. They remade a lot of drinks, y'all. Let me just tell you. So, both of those moments, either seeing it standing outside empty, when I knew how many people would be in there, how many customers, how many drinks, like all of that business that would be happening if we were open. Or even just when, you know, they were open for about an hour before we started our picket that day. And in that first half hour, like they made like, you know, $600, $700, I think. And then we started the picket and nobody would go inside, you know, after that, the customers were great. And so I think, sorry, like I said, I really get emotional when I talk about this. It's a really amazing moment. I want y'all to have it. I really do. Yeah, but just watching them try to pretend that they can do this without us, you know? And they can't. They just can't. They can't. We can do it. It's our job. We make the profits. We need to see the profits. Period. They're all people leaving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the community, yeah, great point. So, you know, I'm sure you guys are aware Starbucks has mobile order, right? So people would even mobile order. They're blocked away. They don't know the strike is going on. They mobile order. They come up and we'd say, like, hey, like we're on strike, you know? And they go like, oh, all right, cool. I'm, walk away. So we did have, we had the majority of customers like choose to not go in once they knew that we were on strike. But that's what the power of a picket is. Because that would not have happened if we had not had that picket going. And keeping that picket going and keeping it going strong, that was important and we couldn't have done it without DSA. I know people keep talking about DSA, but there's a reason. Yeah. There's a reason. Yeah. So talking about the strike is incredibly important. We have seeded the ground in recent years that we're reclaiming the ability to talk about the strike. Sarah's encouraging you to actually go out on strike. It's what I do, she says. I will tell you that I was running a strike vote and I was right here in Chicago and there was an independent union of pharmacists at Walgreens on strike while we were running a strike vote. And I was like, it's in the strike. So I'm like, all right, there's a strike. I'm gonna go help out. There were no pickets. But I went into several Walgreens. I'm gonna, people have probably been wondering for years who the hell did this. But went into several Walgreens, went up to the pharmacist's window, and I said, can you help me out? What's that stuff that you put on? Like if you have a wound or you put it on so that it cover, and they would be like a scab and I'm like, a scab. Yeah. Yeah, you would know, wouldn't you? You would know, because you're a scab. And then I go running through the stones and say, and everybody get around from Walgreens to Walgreens doing this, it was pretty great. But I also appreciate that I come from a union that's been willing to say the word strike, been willing to be creative in the strike tactics that we use, chaos strikes. If you haven't seen it, watch our chaos video on ourcontractdog.org slash chaos. The company never knows when we're gonna strike, intermittent strikes, and we took over the schedule. They're scared as hell. We strike seven flights at Alaska Airlines in 1993 and they won't face us again ever since then. Scares the fuck out of them. But, because we take control. But also, I feel incredibly lucky and I wanna call this out because he's in the room right now. Our Director of Collective Bargaining and the AFA General Counsel, Joe Burns is here at Joe. And he's talked with many of you over the last 10 years about reviving the strike and class struggle unionism. Joe, stand up and wave your hand, talking about the strike. So, I'm gonna ask Taylor Garland, AFA Communications Director to help us out with this portion of the program. Yeah, yeah. So, if you have a question for the panel, now please identify yourself. We did a bad job with this. My pronouns are she, her, give us your name, your pronouns and what union you're from. Hi, my name is Jesse, he, him. Teamsters Local 162 out of Portland, fuckin' Oregon. And I had a question for the panel about specifically how you dealt with replacement workers that would try to come in during your strikes and more the tactics that you used in that period. How did you deal with replacement workers that would try to come in? Or scabs as we call them, yes. Cecil Roberts would say the Constitution of the United States, give the person a right stand on the side of the road and call a scab a scab. Alabama Court says no, but whatever. But how did you deal with replacement workers? Well, like I said, they really couldn't find many for my store. The one person that was supposed to be working there, that shift, she actually texted me and said, I saw you guys are on strike and I'm not crossing the pick a line. And I said, thank you. But I do know other stores, like I said, lots of stores have been on strike that many people have, they just educated them on the pick a line and told them what was going on and I think at the Marysville strike, I know they just, the person just turned around and walked away, said the same thing, not going. So, yeah, that's what we've been doing. So what we did was we held up traffic. So we had a couple of different entrances. It was only particularly two entrances that they brought them in on vans and huge buses. So we would hold them up. And other people will hold them up. So that they were late coming into their shifts or not kind of getting in at all? We had out of 207 of us, only three people crossed the pick a line. And we had pictures of them with the scab rat, the big picture, I can't think of his name now. Yeah, scabby, there you go, with scabby. So every day he came into work, he got to see the scabby with his picture on it. And then we had, who I call our Navy SEALs because we don't know who they are, they would stop buses, load the buses of people in the middle of the street. The company had this makeshift fence up, because I don't know why they thought we would tear up a place we're trying to go back to work to. But they had this makeshift fence up and they were trying so hard to get the scabs in that they ran through the fence across the property. Every day we were videotaped and every day it was adrenaline pumping because it was the people they hired to protect them tried to get them through. Sometimes they could, sometimes they couldn't. Sometimes they would just turn around and go back. A bus was held up for a couple of hours in the middle of the most busiest street early in the morning. We had a great member have a flat tire that he really never had. And that caused traffic. Let me tell you, the police did not get involved. And I couldn't understand why because it was violence happening on, with the contractors were, I can't remember the name of the contractors because they sucked. Did you say the name? Huffmaster. Yes, they were violent. They put their hands on people. And then they would hit people or elbow people put their hands up like this. And they were called the police when we had these people who won our union fight back. And the police didn't come though. And I couldn't figure it out. And then I remember their union too. You know, at the end of the day, their union too. And it was just crazy. It was, it was, it was crazy. It was exciting. It was crazy. It was scary. And it got violent at times. But we did not throw the first punch. We just finished it. Whoa. Yeah, so it was, you know, we didn't think it was gonna get there because it started out all kumbaya. We were waving at people, being friendly to the Huffmaster people, but they weren't friendly people. And they really didn't understand their assignment as the job that this is not your place. And you're protecting this place as if we're gonna hurt it. So yeah, we, we, we stopped some stuff. Yeah. Good afternoon. My name is Davido Watafé. Sister Donna Joe, I stood on your picket line. I flew from Texas and I told Sister Sarah about this. So, and are any teamsters in here besides? So there was a teamster on the picket line that same day that cut the air brakes to a 54 foot trailer that day and we blocked traffic for three hours that day. You know about it. My question to you, Sister Donna Joe is, so when it comes to those ratification votes, a lot of those bigger locals get the bigger piece of the percentage of the, you know, they kind of sway the votes, right? And you guys over there in Portland was, y'all were militant as F, right? So it looked like you guys were ready to play the long ball or let, you know, keep going with the picket. It didn't happen that way, but what are your thoughts about building rank and file relationships with other locals? That way, you know, if there is a strike that the rank and file members can communicate with each other and tell them why you feel this way about this certain article. That way we're all on the same page and you don't feel like you're being left out. Get what I'm saying? All right. Thank you. Thank you for your question. So like I said, we weren't organized. We really kind of went out there blind and I don't believe that we lost. I believe that had we voted no on this contract we would still be on strike. I do believe that. I don't believe we lost because we got what we asked for which was not very much, but because we are international, no one has more power than anybody and it's the voting system. What we did learn, I did meet some wonderful people. I met some people from Chicago and Virginia and I kept in contact with them and some other union members met other people and they kept in contact. But it was all individually. If this ever gets to this magnitude again, I would definitely be one of the people willing to go to here or Virginia or Denver to explain how important it is and why we need to hold fast and not cross and why we need to vote whatever down. We just weren't organized. It was a learning lesson and because of it we're stronger and we know what to do next time. So thank you. Hi, hi, I'm Jermai. I'm from Oakland. I'm a plumber. My unions asked me 444 and go dubs, but my question is about, you talked about a newsletter, having a newsletter after the strike and I was wondering like, it plays off what the gentleman up here asks like keeping the rank and foul like engaged. Like, are you gonna let the rank and foul members actually be a part of writing the newsletter and taking part in that and maybe having some editorials about other things that's going on in the world that might affect workers and negatively or positively? That's my question about the newsletter. So if I'm correct, you were asking about, I vaguely heard some of the things that you were saying. You were asking about the newsletter that we do and who we were gonna include for us like rank and foul? Okay. So with the newsletter, we have a committee, which is our committee is about, I'll say about nine people, but we do ask our executive board and our stewards, is there anything that they think that we should put on the newsletter? So to answer your question, yes. It's more of a, the newsletter is more informational. So with that being said, I'm gonna say so far we haven't ran into no ideas that we couldn't put on a newsletter that wouldn't, that will cause conflict. Because we have, with our contract, we have an RN contract, we have a service technical and clerical contract and we have three different hospitals. So some of the things may not be the same at each hospital, some things are the same and some things aren't the same. So I'll use, for example, one of our other hospitals is something in their contract that isn't in the other two. So what we do is we tweak their newsletter to fit their issue or that contract article. Yes, yeah, yeah. So my committee is rank and file, yes. Did that answer your question? Okay. Oh, okay. Hi, sorry. My name is Julia Wallace. I'm from LA County. I'm a member of SEIU Local 721. I work for the Department of Mental Health. I work with people with severe mental illnesses. I was on the front line during the pandemic and also we recently just authorized our strike for 55,000 workers in LA County. Thank you, you know, what you said about, you know, from heroes to zeros really resonates with me. What we noticed, so my employer is LA County Board of Supervisors and the majority of the people on the Board of Supervisors are Democrats and they are attacking us too. And I just want, I'm just trying to keep it real because this is the truth. And like, and we've, and through the decades of the attacks it's been both of these parties. I'm just, I just have to keep it real. So knowing that, so I'm glad to hear that these politicians showed up but I'm wondering from all of you, do you think when can we have our own political party that actually represents us instead of these people who take our money and they don't, and they're just, it's just that they're not Republicans. They're just not as bad as the other guy but they're not actually what we want. So do you all think that we can form our own political organizations that represent us as rank and file workers? Thank you so much for all the things you do. Thank you, I appreciate your passion. I felt that. So, you know, it comes down to voting and organizing and you know, even though you know I said the Democrats, I know that's why we won. I find that it all depends on what the cause is. You know, when it comes to state and county, sometimes it's a little more about greed than it is about anything else. And it doesn't care what party you represent. When you get caught up in that, you become part of the problem. You know, I think it's important that we start paying attention to union members who look like they can become someone who and start voting them, getting them prepped and getting them in the offices. That's where it begins. We don't go for the people who are there with promises. We go for the people we see who can make a change now in the unions and you start prepping them and getting them ready to be in positions to help. For Portland, for Oregon, we have some members who are, you know, who sit in the Senate who have seats and that's what helped us. So it starts, you know, grass work. You start low and you find that voice. You find that person like yourself who has that passion and you start running for things and you get unions behind you and you tell your story. And that's how you get people in the office. The people we got in there, we wanna get them out now, right? So we gotta get people like you who were passionate to step in those places because nothing will happen if we keep waiting on the people who keep us down to bring us up. Yeah, so. I don't know nothing about politics. This is one of those things I just, I don't know. I don't know nothing about politics. I'm like the wrong Starbucks worker to ask about anything. But there's a lot, same here. Like I'm not involved in that much of the politics, you know, and all of that. But I think she said it very well. I'll just leave it at that because I don't wanna go too much. Okay, so I do have an opinion on this. In the 1950s, when we were 30% density, both parties responded to unions. Okay? The reality is that we have to start in the workplace and the politics will follow. First of all, congratulations on your strike vote and the way that you were taken a stand because that is what is going to change things, okay? Our shop floors, our workplaces, our aircraft cabins, whatever it is, that is the only place in America that is left that is not self-selecting. Just separate rooms and dividing us up even more that only helps the owner class. To Teamsters Local 705 last night, okay. That rally with Bernie Sanders was about the working class. If we start seeing ourselves as the working class, we don't need a party because the party will come to us. Whatever party it is. And let me just give you a little example of this, okay? We're 80% organized in the airline industry. And at the beginning of COVID, we said, we're not gonna repeat. We went through fucking hell after 9-11. It was a crisis. We lost our friends while we were grieving. The capitalists were figuring out how to get everything from us, take our pensions, take all health care, make us pay more, make us spend more time on the job to make less, okay? And we said, not this time. We're 80% organized. They're gonna have to go through us in order to get any relief for the airline industry. And that came with risk, too. Because if the airlines fall, so do our jobs, right? But you have to know your moment. You have to know your leverage. You have to know when to strike. And so we set out a plan that we had hoped would be duplicated for every other industry. And it was the payroll support plan that made sure that airline workers had to stay in their jobs, that the money could only go to us, keep us getting our paychecks, continuing to make our pension contributions, keep our health care, pay into state and local tax systems so that we can support education and all the other services and services that you give right there in LA County. And we also said, this time is not gonna be like the others. The executives are gonna have to pay their fair share, cap on executive compensation, a ban on stock buybacks and dividends. And we got it. And we got it. Because we negotiated outside of the political process with the people who were actually gonna tell the politicians what to do. Again, we live in a system of capitalism. Don't be fooled by the fact that this is a democracy that exists on its own, okay? It is the owner clause versus the working class. One other quick story on this. When we were working to extend the payroll support program and there was a gap, so people got furloughed and then we got them back in their jobs. We got legislation that restored them in all of their benefits. But when we were doing that, we had sort of a working relationship with the airlines. They were supposed to handle the Republicans. We were supposed to handle the Democrats, basically. And so they got Republicans to sign a letter to say that they were in support of extending this. And they were asking us to help. We were working together. And there was a Republican, a GOP Senator who was running for office who refused. I'm not getting on that. That's for unions, blah, blah, blah. The next day, in the middle of COVID, we had 25 flight attendants outside his office and he was calling us and saying, I wanna get on that legislation and if I do it, will Sarah Nelson retweet me? Okay? So we need to recognize that we are the working class and it is not about Democrats or Republicans or our own political party. It is about the shop floor. It is about the workplace. It is about attacking capitalism where it exists. And then we will have a working class party because all of the politicians will respond to us. Well, my name's Brandon Tippie. He, him Pacific Northwest Staff Union, representing Union staff in Washington State in California. My professional life. I'm an SCI U925 organizer. And my question coming after that, I think it's almost boring. But what I'm really curious about, the conversation I have with folks when we talk about strike is really about resources, right? Usually it's that first question of, well, do we have a strike fund? Like, well, we may, we might not depends on the situation, but that's never gonna be full pay replacement, right? So what I'm really curious about is, how did you guys have that question? Cause I imagine you confronted it. And I just have a lot of curiosity about that. Thank you. So to start, yes, we did have a strike fund and we're having conversations with our members. We explained to them that we worked with, we worked with other organizations. So we worked with getting the night away, feed more of Western New York. We worked with a number of other organizations to make sure that our members, if they needed help with food, also we received a lot of donations from the community, from our other unions and stuff. And we were able to help people pay bills that they couldn't pay. Because as we all know, some people live paycheck to paycheck. So yes, they were worried. We also had, again, members that made less than $15. So how am I gonna get diapers and stuff for my kids and all that stuff? We received a lot of donations. So we actually set up a food pantry in our local and people were able to come there and get diapers and soap and stuff like that if they needed. Also, one of the good things for us is because the law got changed, instead of having to wait seven weeks for unemployment, we were able to file after two weeks, but we still had a waiting week. But the fact that people were able to file for unemployment, whereas years prior, you had to wait seven weeks of being out on strike in order to file for unemployment. So that right there, I think say people in itself, like, oh, they knew, I'm gonna have some money. Now we all know how unemployment can work. It goes off of what you make the last 12 weeks, I think it is if I'm correct. So some people didn't still get a lot from unemployment, but the fact of the matter is you had that unemployment money, plus your strike fund money, plus we had donations from other unions and worked with other organizations. So with that being said, I feel like we made out really good with that and our members were able to be taken care of. I'm in awe at how organized you guys were because we didn't have a strike fund. Even though we were told five years ago to be prepared for a strike, we got used to working still and majority of us didn't save, majority of us didn't put money in a strike fund. We didn't even have one. In Oregon, you can't get unemployment if you go on strike, it's a volunteer. So we didn't have unemployment. So we have one of our members, Christa, start a GoFundMe page. And different organizations put our GoFundMe page on their page and it spread. And we raised, I want to say lower $100,000. Yeah, and that was just Portland. That was our Portland, for our Portland union. So I'm not sure what the other ones raised if they did at all. Now with 200 and some people at the end of the day it was probably about almost $400 apiece. But we all came together and we all helped. And we just, we really were moving on blind faith. If I had to do it all over again, we would have a strike fund. We would have had a pantry, what a great idea by the way. But we had so many people who understood our cause that they donated food boxes. We had this one place every morning would come and give us breakfast. We would cook breakfast and serve this restaurant taste, I believe the name was. And so the support of the community helped us a lot. But we weren't ready as far as financially. And I encourage anyone going on strike to be ready because anything can happen. Like I said, we picked COVID the year into COVID and we picked a bad time, but it was a good time. It was a good time because people got to see how much their company loved them. That's what COVID did for the working class. You mean nothing to them, your number. And so what it did was awaken sleep in America, sleep in working class America. And so without the support of the community I don't know if we would have done as well as we did. So prepare, do a strike fund, save your money. Don't take it for granted because you don't know how long you're gonna be out there. 41 days felt like a half a year, but it was short compared to the still workers and to some of the other people who are on strike. It was very short and small, but for us it felt like a lifetime. It's the not knowing, so prepare. Yeah, I love this question exactly why earlier I was harping on like do not wait until you're going on strike to start talking about going on strike. Go back next week, I'm telling you at the end of this weekend I want you to go back, figure out do you have a strike fund? Figure those things out. Start talking to your coworkers. We have a amazing million dollar strike fund that workers and I had recently announced. I'm sure many of you have heard about this. We also, well thank you. In the Pacific Northwest we've been able to raise almost I think over, I think we just broke $40,000 for our relief fund that the workers set up, I literally wrote that GoFundMe page and that our amazing community has really dedicated a lot of support to you, so start figuring it out y'all. All right, so we're just about out of time. So I do want to note they're exactly right, okay? Talking about a strike fund is not what you do when you're about to start a strike because all you're doing is signaling for the company that you don't have a strike fund and they have that ability to use that against you. Also, how many times have we seen credible strike threats get the goods, okay? So Sun Tzu would tell us strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the quickest road to defeat. Okay, remember, the strike is our tactic, solidarity is our power. In between there, we define the problem, we set our demands from the rank and file, we add urgency, and we say what we're willing to do to back up our demands, okay? Start with backing up your demands right now. If you think that you need us, first of all, I think it's a good idea to work on a nationwide strike fund for all striking workers, right? Okay, but also, if unions put 1% of what they put into political donations into a strike fund, we would have millions and millions of dollars. So, you have the ability to have this conversation within your unions when you go back. Right now, before the strike comes, before the battle comes, so that you're ready. Okay, is there any, here's what I'm gonna do, because we are out of time. So we have one more frantic hand over here, Taylor. And then what I wanna do is, these amazing women up here, and I love that this is a table of women. Mother Jones said Rockefeller and his gang of thieves made the ladies, but God Almighty made women. So don't be calling us ladies, and we ain't gonna fight lady like, we're gonna fight like women. Okay, let's hear it. Greetings from St. Vincent's. Mass Dance Hallers, talk about a strike fund. And also, yes, political? Yeah, definitely, as far as we had, what, we had the mayor, we had Marty Walsh come up from Washington, D.C. to help that strike. St. Vincent's, it's a second strike, the other one we need Ted Kennedy to solve that one for us many years ago. So the mass nurses have really know what it's all about striking. But what, my question to you guys, and this is what St. V's, and I feel so bad, I'm not a St. V's nurse, I'm on the Board of Directors for the Mass Nurses, they're my heroes. They are my heroes. One of our hospitals just solved a contract because of what they did. They got a great contract. So when you guys are doing it, it's a cancer. It goes out because of what you guys stood up for. All these other ones are going, oh boy, I don't want that to happen to me. So you gotta realize you are their heroes. Also, when you guys went back to your hospital, how's your hospital treating you? How's the nurses across the line treating you? The fight still goes on. The fight still goes on. And thank you, Sarah, for coming to us. She was with us. Thank you. Huge, huge inspiration from the St. Vincent's nurses on strike, striking at the end, not even for the provisions in the contract, but to make sure that every single striker got their position back. All right, so we're out of time. We're going to do rapid fire about 10 seconds each. Any last words from these amazing women who helped run their strikes and wins? Here we go. Thank you all for coming. Keep saying the word strikes. Creeke, keep preparing yourself to say them. Strike, strike, strike, strike, strike, strike, strike. Yes. The only thing I have to say is thank you, everyone, for attending this seminar in this room. And I hope that we gave you good information and we answered all your questions. Thank you, everyone, for coming out. Just know that know your worth. Know your worth. Fight for your worth. Stay strong. Union strong. Por favor, devuelvan el equipo de interpretación a la mesa de interpretación. Gracias.